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I here post the research statement I submitted with my tenure and promotion dossier in the fall of 2004.

My current research focuses on the Socratic works of Xenophon (c. 430-360 BCE), the Athenian mercenary soldier and author. Xenophon is, after his more famous Athenian contemporary, Plato (c. 429-347 BCE), our most important source for Socrates (469-399 BCE). Socrates has always been among the most important figures in the Western tradition, and in the last generation or so has been the subject of much fine scholarship and lively scholarly debate. Almost all of this recent work on Socrates has largely ignored Xenophon in favor of the early dialogues of Plato. Yet Plato was but one of a number of authors writing Socratic dialogues, and to fully understand Plato, much less to untangle what is Platonic and what Socratic in Plato’s dialogues, we must make an effort to view Plato in his original context, as one among many Socratics.

Xenophon is the only other Socratic author whose works survive. But he is important not only through the accident of survival. Xenophon was an outstandingly versatile man and author. After his famous service as a mercenary commander responsible for leading 10,000 Greeks out of the heart of the hostile Persian empire, Xenophon wrote historical works (the Anabasis, his account of his campaign in Persia, and the Hellenica, a history of his own time), technical works (on hunting, horses, the Spartan constitution, and Athenian finances, among other things), and what are often regarded as the first novel, the Cyropaedia ("Education of Cyrus"), and the first biography, the Agesilaus. As a young man Xenophon had been one of the companions of Socrates, and later in his life he wrote three works about Socrates: his Apology, an account of Socrates’ defense tactics; the Memorabilia ("Recollections"), a collection of Socratic conversations on a great variety of themes; and the Oeconomicus ("Estate-manager"), an account of Socrates’ conversation about the proper way to run one’s estate.

Xenophon’s Socrates is less ironic and less philosophically sophisticated than Plato’s. This has too often been taken to be due to Xenophon’s limitations as a thinker and writer, when it is better explained by his different intentions and different audience. In all of his Socratic works, Xenophon aimed to defend Socrates before a broad audience and not, as Plato seems to have done, to introduce Socratic philosophy to potential philosophers. Thus although Xenophon’s Socrates often seems more conventional than Plato’s, this is not due to Xenophon’s purported banality, but to his different goal.

As many scholars have come to acknowledge, Xenophon is a very subtle writer, though his style appears simple and straightforward. This claim is not universally accepted; a response to my 2003 Ancient Philosophy article criticizes my work for finding irony where none is present (both the reply and my response to it will appear in Ancient Philosophy for 2004). I take this reply as evidence that scholars are beginning to rethink Xenophon, and that my work is playing an important role in this reevaluation.

In part doubts about Xenophon’s capacity for irony are due to the great controversy surrounding the most influential scholar to argue for irony in Xenophon, the arch-conservative Leo Strauss. But it is quite possible to find irony in Xenophon without making him out to be a Straussian conservative. Xenophon was a conservative, but of a far more traditional sort. Like Strauss, I see Xenophon’s portrait of Socrates as being both complex and close to Plato’s portrait. But my understanding of Socrates is far closer to that in the mainstream of scholarly work on Socrates. There are important differences of opinion even within that mainstream, and one goal of my work on Xenophon is to help to resolve such difference about Socrates.

Themes in my work on Xenophon

Xenophon at his most Socratic (forthcoming in Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 2005; paper delivered at the annual meeting of the Classical Association of the Middle West and South [= CAMWS] 1999). My most recent work on Socrates argues that Xenophon was fully capable of portraying a Socrates quite close to the figure we see in the early dialogues of Plato. In the passage I consider, Xenophon’s Socrates implicitly recognizes the limitations of writing—a key theme for Plato’s Socrates—and that he shows, as Plato’s Socrates does, how best to overcome them.

Xenophon’s Socrates on justice and law (Ancient Philosophy 2003, and the responses to be published in Ancient Philosophy 2004; CAMWS talk, 2002). I argue that while Xenophon’s Socrates may appear to equate justice with obeying the laws of Athens, he actually articulates a version of natural law theory. This theory was controversial in contemporary Athens, as aristocratic elites sometimes cited natural law to trump the legislation of the Athenian democracy. Xenophon’s need to defend Socrates led him to leave his account of Socrates’ views obscure, but his commitment to remaining true to Socrates’ philosophy led him to include a more complex account of Socrates view of natural law. This finding, if correct, is important to our understanding of Socrates, particularly to his decision to obey the decision condemning him to death, even though he rightly considered it unjust. My study should also contribute to our understanding of the development of natural law theory.

Other research

My dissertation was a philological and philosophical commentary on Plato’s Alcibiades I, a dialogue long neglected because of doubts about its authenticity (groundless doubts in my view), but now enjoying something of a renaissance. In my Ancient Philosophy article (1999), I give a reading of the central passage of the dialogue, in which Socrates argues that the best way to “know thyself” is to look to the most divine part of another’s soul and, ideally, to God. One reason for my interest in this dialogue was the fascinating relationship between Socrates and Alcibiades, the most charismatic and most controversial man of his day. My collection of texts, Socrates and Alcibiades, (Focus, 2003) aims, through translation, notes, and a fairly substantial introduction, to make our primary sources for this relationship (including two rather obscure texts) more accessible to readers. Xenophon was also fascinated by Alcibiades, though he usually treats Socrates’ relationship with him with kid gloves, so my work here is relevant to my work on Xenophon.

The ideal of the generalist is still alive and kicking among classicists. It is a valuable and even indispensable ideal in a small classics program like that at SIUC, where faculty are called upon to teach a great range of classes. Thus while developing a focused research program on Xenophon and Socrates, I have aimed to remain in touch with other scholarly interests, including the early Greek poet Hesiod (Phoenix 1999, APA talk 1992, CAMWS talk 1994) and the first Greek historian (and first historian at all, by most accounts), Herodotus (Classical Journal 2001, CAMWS talk 1992).

Future work

There is no good introductory work on Xenophon’s Socrates, and I am beginning on work to produce one. My book will attempt to reintroduce Xenophon’s Socrates, while arguing that Xenophon is a complex writer whose work rewards careful reading, and that his Socrates shares enough in common with Plato’s Socrates to help us better understand Socratic philosophy. Even the differences between Xenophon’s Socrates and Plato’s are interesting, and not only to Xenophon’s disadvantage. Xenophon’s interest in self-control, for example, has recently made him a major source for scholars working on the Greek conception of desire and sexuality (including Foucault). And as Xenophon aimed for a wider audience in antiquity, there is reason to believe that his works could reach a wider audience today, including many put off by the abstraction of Plato. Ideally, then, an introductory work on Xenophon Socrates could both help to inform scholars of Socrates who have made only marginal use of Xenophon, and to introduce a wider audience to one of antiquity’s most important personalities.